Year in Review 2016.5 HD Final REmix: Music

• After—Lady Lamb

This album never gets old. Like Middle Kids, Lady Lamb has figured out how to combine the 70’s and 00’s to create a sound that will outlast its decade. Though she spans the gamut from low-key singer-songwriter to full-on rock, her lyricism and rich vocals are constants.

• Dear Wormwood—The Oh Hellos

Of all the bands to debut at the height of the post-Mumford & Sons shouty-clappy-folk-pop era, The Oh Hellos stood out for taking a more literary approach to the genre. In the case of Dear Wormwood, I mean that literally, as the album was inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and the work of Patrick Rothfuss. It’s remarkably accessible given the concept, and while I think the dual EPs they put out between 2017 and 2018 are a bit more successful threading that needle, this album contains a couple of their best songs.

• Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording)—Lin-Manuel Miranda & Various Artists

I ended up having a lot to say here, but this space isn’t really designed for longer pieces (I’m still kind of unsure whether I went overboard with the entry on Damien Rice’s My Favorite Faded Fantasy) so I’ve made a whole separate post about it. The tl;dr: Hamilton‘s pretty great and/but also complicated.

• Shadows in the Night—Bob Dylan

What makes this album work is that it’s so clearly driven by Dylan’s love of the material. One can imagine him sitting alone in his house, with these records he’d probably been listening to most of his life, hearing them now as an old man and finding in them a relatable spark, something that resonated within himself. Dylan is not, obviously, Frank Sinatra, but to judge his vocals against Sinatra’s merely on a technical level is to completely miss the point. Dylan understands what the songs are about, he feels them in his bones, and that comes across in even (or especially) the shakiest, raspiest notes.

• Sprained Ankle—Julien Baker

Honesty never goes out of style. There’s nothing obviously new or innovative about Julien Baker’s debut, but what makes it stand out from the ranks of emo-adjacent singer-songwriters that came before is simply that none of them have been Julien Baker. Her voice (both literally and literarily) is entirely her own, and that makes the music at once fresh and timeless, in a way only heartfelt angst can be.

• Teens of Style—Car Seat Headrest

When I first heard “Something Soon,” it was exactly what I needed. Fresh out of college, living at my parent’s house, having failed at my half-hearted attempts to get a programming job and having instead stumbled into a crappy 5 am shift at an overpriced grocery store—it felt like I’d hit a glass wall at full speed, Looney Tunes-style, and was now just sliding down to the bottom. “Something Soon” took that feeling and made it big, made it angry and desperate but also inspiring. I’m not gonna say that one song made it possible to actually think about moving out, with no plan but just a desire for something, anything else—but it definitely helped.

Also the rest of the album is good too. Also it’s apparently a compilation album, which I did not know.

• 22, A Million—Bon Iver

Like its predecessor, this album blew my mind, grabbing me from note one and not letting go until the end (except not even then, because I ended up listening to it three times in a row without stopping). But where Bon Iver is a coming together, 22, A Million is constantly falling apart.

Justin Vernon has been more open in recent years about the mental health struggles he was facing at the time, but it’s all there in the music: the fractured melodies, the constellations of chopped up samples, and Vernon’s usually pristine vocals being run through all sorts of distortion, pitch-shifting, and other effects, and often with a heightened, almost desperate, emotional delivery. This is the music of someone struggling to find certainty, unsure even of their own identity. Said struggle is perhaps best exemplified in “21 M◊◊N WATER,” which spirals into an almost stable center before quickly spiralling back out again, ending up even more scattered than it started.

Lyrically, Vernon expresses a multitude of anxieties, from doubts about his faith to worrying about the pressures and expectations that come from artistic success. The album art and song titles, filled with numerological and symboligical esoterica, also point to the theme of looking for answers, trying to find some pattern in the chaos.

All of this was, to some, a little off-putting, and I get it. For starters, going from the (albeit slightly unsettling, given the lyric) quiet charm of “22 (OVER S∞∞N)” to the bombastic percussion-driven dystopia of “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄” is extremely jarring, and it would be understandable if you didn’t quite recover from that. But I think some were put off by what they saw as self-indulgent experimentalism and/or pretentious affectation, and that’s unfair. 22, A Million is, to me, a masterpiece, and while we can agree to disagree about whether it’s enjoyable to listen to, I will die on the hill of its artistic merit.

• Blackstar—David Bowie

I’ve never really been able to get into Bowie, but I respect his artistry, and even for someone who’s not a fan this album is interesting and carries some emotional weight.

…I still like “Changes” the best though.

• Coloring Book—Chance the Rapper

If I’m being honest, I prefer Acid Rap, but Coloring Book is infectiously triumphant as Chance celebrates his newfound success with his signature blend of gospel and hip-hop, and a who’s who of features making it clear that he’s claimed his spot.

• The Colour In Anything—James Blake

Honestly, I mostly remember this album for having a shockingly boring collab with Justin Vernon, but it’s fine. While I appreciate that Blake has expanded as a songwriter, the dark, mostly vocal-based textures of his self-titled album still stand out against anything he’s produced since.

• Fallen Angels—Bob Dylan

Everything I wrote about Shadows in the Night applies here as well. This album feels a little less melancholy than the previous one, more outdoor patio than smokey bar.

• The Hamilton Mixtape—Various Artists

I already wrote a long thing about Hamilton so I’ll keep this brief: listen to the mixtape if you want to better understand the show and what Lin-Manuel Miranda was trying to do with it. Also if you want Chance the Rapper to make you bawl like a baby.

• Live At Levon’s—Shakey Graves

I used to love listening to live albums, but at some point I just stopped. This was probably the last live album I listened to, and that only because it was free for Shakey Graves Day. It’s pretty good. I haven’t listened to it since.

• Love Letter For Fire — Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop

It’s not that I forgot this album existed, but I forgot that there was more depth to it than just “Every Songbird Says.” In my head it was just this charming little folk album, but there’s actually some interesting darkness here that had just completely slipped my mind. (Not that there’s anything wrong with charming little folk albums.)

• A Moon Shaped Pool—Radiohead

At this point I don’t know how many times I’ve said something along the lines of, “I really liked this album when it came out and I haven’t listened to it since,” but I really liked this album when it came out and I haven’t listened to it since. It’s on my phone. The songs come up on shuffle. I skip them. I don’t know why.

• Painting Of A Panic Attack—Frightened Rabbit

I don’t know if I can write about this album with any depth without it getting too somber and too long, so to keep it upbeat I’ll tell a funny story. When I first listened to this album, I got really pissed off at Aaron Dessner for making it sound all washed out and airy. Then I realized that I’d accidentally had the EQ set for earbuds instead of headphones, with bass turned up and treble turned down. Upon second listen I found it to be much more enjoyable. I still don’t love the production, though, and have held a grudge against Aaron Dessner ever since. Okay, so, not super upbeat, but I tried. Anyway, it’s not my favorite fralbum, but there are a few hidden gems, and the very obvious gem that is “I Wish I Was Sober.”

2016 was a pretty good year for people writing about death, if that’s something you’re into. In this case, Cave writes not about his own death but about the tragic death of his son, whose death during the recording sessions for Skeleton Tree prompted Cave to rewrite some of the lyrics to reflect his grief. The dark, relatively spare arrangements and Cave’s slow, methodical vocal delivery create a funereal ambience that one can’t help but be moved by.

• Stranger To Stranger—Paul Simon

Given Simon’s mentions of retirement in recent years, it’s possible that Stranger to Stranger will be the last album of new material he recorded. As capper to a 50+ year career, it is neither lackluster nor a stunning magnum opus. It’s a fairly solid album, with a couple standout songs. In a way, this seems fitting for Simon, who generally has a cool, casual air that doesn’t seem to gravitate toward spectacle. And, as his 2018 release In The Blue Light (an album of re-recorded songs from throughout his discography) suggests, he probably wouldn’t appreciate over 5 decades of music being eclipsed by one final, dramatic work.

• Teens Of Denial—Car Seat Headrest

I really liked this album at the time, and I still think it’s a great encapsulation of modern ennui, but for whatever reason most of these songs haven’t stayed in rotation. “Fill in the Blank,” “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” and “Just What I Needed/Not Just What I Needed” all still come up every once in a while, probably because they’re less narrative than the other songs.

• Visions Of Us On The Land—Damien Jurado

You know, no one was asking for a trilogy of spaghetti-western-meets-psychedelic-folk concept albums about a religious cult and/or aliens, and really, that’s on us. Jurado and Richard Swift went ahead and gave us that anyway, out of the kindness of their hearts, and we should thank them for their generosity. Seriously, though, this is an impressive conclusion to the series, and a great sound to get lost in, preferably on a long drive down a deserted highway.

• Back On Top—The Front Bottoms

• Dark Bird Is Home—The Tallest Man On Earth

• Jackrabbit—San Fermin

• So There—Ben Folds